If you are a programmer or a web developer, you may want to give phpHarden a try. You see, this is a powerful tool that you can use for PHP obfuscating purposes. And the best part, besides the fact that it is quite easy to use, is that phpHarden is offered for the great price of free. So to recap, you have a free, user friendly, PHP obfuscator you can use to obfuscate variables, functions, and class names.

The phpHarden installer is less than 2MB in size. Download it, run it, and you will be presented with a wizard that will guide you through the installation process. phpHarden will work on any Windows edition that has Microsoft’s .NET Framework (4.5 or newer).

You will see three tabs in the upper left hand corner of phpHarden’s interface. These three tabs are: Project – select the source and destination folder, choose which extensions will be processed, generate an obfuscation key, save or load the project, launch the obfuscation process by clicking the large Harden It! button located in the lower right hand corner. Advanced – exclude variable names, exclude function and class names, exclude folders, play with several processing options. About – email address for reporting bugs, link to the application’s website, link to make a donation. As mentioned above, phpHarden is free software. But if you enjoy using it, make a donation to support its development.

The only thing that remains unsaid is that phpHarden is compatible with Smarty template files and MySQL functions.

phpHarden works as advertised, it’s easy to use, and it’s free! What more could you ask for?

Pros Downloading and installing phpHarden will take little of your time. Figuring you the interface will also take little of your time. phpHarden does its job quickly and efficient. phpHarden is compatible with Smarty and MySQL. phpHarden is free software (consider making a donation).